AdWords For Video: Using Video To Tell Your Story

The rise of online video platforms has positioned marketers to combine the powerful targeting and reporting capabilities of online advertising with video’s uniquely effective ability to tell a story. With more than one billion monthly users on YouTube alone, this rise represents an exciting opportunity to use this platform’s combination of reach, affordability, and accountability to grow your brand. AdWords for Video is Google’s ad serving platform for video advertising on YouTube and the Google Display Network.

AdWords for Video advertisers take advantage of:

Affordability at scale –With average cost-per-views still hovering around $0.10, AdWords for Video is still extremely affordable, especially compared to other branding channels such as running image ads on the Google Display Network.

Integration with Google Analytics –For advertisers that choose to use video ads to drive traffic to their website, GA offers a custom report for analysis of video traffic from AdWords for Video.

Reach –With over one billion users on YouTube every month, reach is virtually limitless.

YouTube is also interesting because it’s both a search engine and a social platform. Google has integrated social behaviour on YouTube with Google+. As well, it’s structured to be interactive within the platform. With ads capable of driving traffic both to your website and to your YouTube channel page, it provides great flexibility into how it can be used.

Ad Formats Available

AdWords for Video is evolving quickly, and it’s been a bit hard for advertisers to keep up with enhancements and changing terminology. In it’s current form, there are two ad formats available:

TrueView In-Stream Ads — Ads play on YouTube before featured content and provide users with the option to skip after five seconds. Advertisers are charged only after their ads run for thirty seconds, or until the end.

TrueView In-Display Ads –Ads appear to the side of featured videos on YouTube Watch pages and the Watch pages of other video publishers across the Google Display Network.

Google recently simplified their TrueView video ad formats from four options down to just these two.

Targeting Options Available

Interest targeting - targets users who’ve demonstrated an interest in a specific product or service

Age / Gender - targets users in specific age ranges and of a specific gender (only for users who are signed into their Google profile)

Content Marketing Opportunity

YouTube provides a fantastic opportunity for content marketing. Content marketing is all about offering free content to users in exchange for the right to market to them. Building out an awesome YouTube channel that compliments your website and provides additional resources for users is a great way to provide a positive first brand touchpoint to new visitors via video ads, as well as to maintain your relationship with your current users and build customer loyalty.

AdWords for Video Remarketing

You can also integrate your video advertising with other channels by creating remarketing lists of video traffic for targeting on the Google Display Network. Similarly, use traditional GDN lists for remarketing within AdWords for Video.